By Abdallah el-kurebe
President Goodluck Jonathan has restated the commitment of the Federal Government to revolutionise the power sector in order to rejuvenate the nation’s economy.

Jonathan made the statement during his Presidential campaign, which took him to Sokoto, Wednesday.

According to him, it was only on stable power supply that small scale industries could thrive in the country, saying “without power we cannot stimulate the development of small scale industries across the country and that is why over N3.2 billion is being committed to the Kano IPP project.”

He noted that the same commitment, which the Federal Government made in the petroleum sector that stabilised the availability of the product in the nation’s filing stations, was the same commitment it would make in the power sector.

“The commitment we made in the petroleum sector where we ensured the availability of petroleum products as against the past when queues for these products became a menace, is the same tempo of commitment that we will make in the power sector,” he  added.

Jonathan added that the petroleum sector would also be consolidated in order to stop the importation of the products. “We will also consolidate the petroleum sector so that the problem of petroleum products importation will stop. Exporting crude oil and importing kerosene, PMS, diesel, Aviation fuel, all this will be a thing of the past.”

According to him, “In the next four years, we are going to intervene in petrochemicals to make sure that fertilizers are produced in Nigeria. We cannot just be importing gas; we must add value to that gas,” he stressed.

Jonathan observed that wealth could not be created in a vacuum. “We cannot create wealth artificially. Wealth is not created in a vacuum. We cannot continue to import kerosene and talk about creating wealth in this country. We cannot continue to import fertilizer and say that we want to create wealth.”

Asking the people of Sokoto state to vote PDP, Jonathan said that only the party could guarantee accelerated development of the country.

“If we want Nigeria to move rapidly, we must vote PDP to power in order to consolidate the gains of democracy,” he said adding, “Vote and protect your vote but don’t kill anybody in the process. The ambition of any Nigerian is not worth the blood of other Nigerians. As a young man, I was involved in politics but if I were killed, I would not have become a president.”